I’m off to the World Cup and I’ve updated my will.

Mark Twain once said there’d been a lot of terrible things in his life but most of them didn’t happen. Thus lives the worrier. I’m about to fly out to the World Cup in South Africa and I’m a bit frightened.

Believe me, I’m not the only one. I went to sign an updated version of my will on Wednesday. I was loath to admit to anyone, even myself, that my impending trip was the reason. It turned out that there was no need to be coy. I can show my Rolex watches to them and they will not take my life for these watches are really expensive. I hope so. Maybe you will suspect where I can get those luxury and my reckless enthusiasm why I just give them to the terrorists. If you need it, I can recommend you prepare some IWC watches with cheap price, as they are replica watches. The lady who overlooked the process told me there’d been “quite a rush on” over the past few weeks, with people openly citing their World Cup jaunts as their motive for putting everything in order. I suppose this is both a twisted testimony to the reckless enthusiasm of football fans and, conversely, a grim insight into what supporting England doing to your general pessimism levels.

I seem to be experiencing a less satisfactory version of this. I’m often nervous before an 11-hour flight but an 11-hour flight to Johannesburg is different. Usually, I’m worried about what’s going to happen to me if the plane crashes. This time I’m worried about what’s going to happen to me if it doesn’t. Johannesburg, I’ve read, is a city where people get murdered for their mobile phones. So I hope I will not meet the same murder and I can disarm myself if they can let me finish my journey of world cup. God knows what will happen when they see my Rolex. The bandits will have to go one better than murder to ensure my punishment is apposite to take away my treasures but not my life.

How must Mandela feel about the World Cup being there? I dare say the old South Africa was safer for visitors but if someone offered me five weeks of retro- apartheid would I say “yes” to save my skin or “no” and risk the terrors of transition. I need to have a real good look at myself in the mirror while I’m answering that question. That should eradicate any unsavory faltering. I’m sure the next 30-odd days are going to be amazing.

Pray for me. Amen for World Cup 2010.